


fall sick with the healing

by jelenedra



Category: Dishonored (Video Game)
Genre: Crisis of Faith, Dreams, Gen, Mental Breakdown, Torture, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-06
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-23 22:00:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/626969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jelenedra/pseuds/jelenedra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Corvo has always been a religious man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. incipit

For four months, Corvo prayed. 

He prayed when the interrogator held his face by a whale-oil light until he saw nothing but stars _(catches a man's fancy in one moment, but brings calamity in the next)_ or smeared his eyes with a red powder that left them blind and burning _(the eyes are never tired of seeing)_. He prayed when Burrows brought forth the confession _(restrict the lying tongue)_ and again when the interrogator pulled his teeth and pressed needles into the roof of his mouth _(better to life a life of silence)_. 

_(if only there was someone else)_

It was harder when they turned to his hands; what value was a Lord Protector who could not hold a sword? _(of what value are the hands that steal and kill and destroy?)_ He found himself absurdly grateful when all they took were his fingernails; less so when they hung him by his wrists until they broke _(rinsing impurities from the mind and body)_. When they set fire to his feet it was almost easier to bear _(soles blackened by iniquity)_ except that on the tenth day Campbell came to watch _(where have you strayed that destruction now comes behind you?)_ and of course the new High Overseer had to pray too _(you will fall into the Void)_. He only stopped when Corvo spat in his face _(stand firm and not be overthrown)_.

_(when you are near, my heart is at peace)_

They starved him for a week after that _(for what goes into your body poisons you)_ and then a week turned into two _(for a morsel of meat)_ and then he was given a loaf of bread and left alone, in darkness and silence, for three more _(only sorrow is born)_.

_(Emily and I will count the days)_

They flayed the skin from his back, and woke him with a bucket of salt water when he tried to sleep, and when that wasn’t enough they used the scraps of skin over his shoulders to hang him from a meat hook. They burned his feet, his chest, his face; they pulled his teeth; the interrogator went so far as to cut his throat, and for a single shining moment Corvo thought death had come for him at last, until he woke up in his cell with stitches across his neck. And always, Burrows and his cursed confession, waiting just within reach _(subject to any heresy)_.

_(hurry home, and bring good news)_

For four months, Corvo prayed.

When winter came the water that dripped from the pipes above turned to long white knives, and Corvo stopped praying. He could not see out of his left eye; it was impossible to know if it had been damaged or if it was the blood from his head wound that made it sting and stick shut. The bowl of water he’d been given had formed a thin icy crust across the top. When he bent over it he could see his reflection rendered in blue and white and red. His eyes were sunk in hollows so deep they looked almost black. 

Corvo dragged his fingers through the blood running down his face. He sketched a certain symbol on the fragile sheet of ice. And then he prayed to someone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic will (eventually) deal with revenge, PTSD, and a certain eldrith abomination we all know and love. It is basically being piped in direct from my id, so tags will update as I post more. Let me know if there's something I should tag that I haven't.
> 
> Work title is a literal translation of _aegrescit medendo_ , more commonly rendered as "the remedy is worse than the disease." Chapter title translate to "it begins."


	2. midnight and be cast off

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sewers are no place for men with broken ~~hearts~~ minds.

He isn’t sure how it is he got out of Coldridge. The key, of course. The sword. And then some strange intuition, a sense of déjà vu. The certainty that the guard would take three steps forward and pause, just long enough for Corvo to get behind him, long enough to get a good grip. The knowledge that if he went to the right he would run straight into a pack of City Watch; he couldn’t see them through the light and the smoke, but he threw himself left all the same, tumbled over the rail and into the water. 

The current washes him into the mouth of a massive pipe. The light hurts his eyes. His feet are riddled with burns, some still open and festering. His hands and back are the same. The air smells of sewage and rotting fish and the lingering black smoke from the explosion. 

Crovo sits, the piss and shit of a city flowing up to his waist, and shakes with silent laughter. 

*

The plague has spread. 

Corvo thinks, _Jessamine will be furious_. 

He thinks, _Jessamine has been dead for six months._

There is a pair of lovers holding each other, neither more than eighteen, corpses still warm and stiffening slowly. In the light of their dying fire Corvo can read the boy’s last words.

_Our fire will keep the rats away, but they’ll inherit this city._

He closes their eyes. He burns the note. 

*

Many of the dead bring food with them. Some has gone bad, but plenty is sealed, and Corvo can’t stop himself from wolfing down whale meat and jellied eels and hagfish—he even drinks the brine. There are coals and sometimes even burning fires every few feet, soft red and yellow lights that he can see by but that don’t hurt too badly. The air is warm. He has a full belly for the first time in six months. He vomits most of the food into the water. 

Some still have sealed vials of Sokolov’s elixir. He drinks one down, and after that feels safe enough to tear a dead man’s shirt to shreds, use it to bind up his hands and feet. He takes his boots as well. A woman who had once been rich has left a heavy wool coat behind her, and he is so thin now he can fit into it. 

Two of the guards who come to find him are eaten by a swarm of rats. Corvo breathes his thanks into the empty air.

There aren’t so many fires in this part of the sewer. Sometimes the only way through is underwater, and he doesn’t so much swim as use fistfuls of waterweed to pull himself forward. His borrowed coat snags on the stones. He leaves it behind. He finds more food, and this time he eats only a very little. The rats trade with him, fresh corpses for safe passage, and then it’s a long and terrible climb up a chain, wrists and shoulders screaming, wounds on his hands and back reopening. Itchy trails of blood wind down his arms and legs. 

He collapses at the top. He thinks of sleeping, of dying in the dark. 

A fat white rat licks at his open wounds. 

Even covered in sewage, half-naked and bleeding, that revolts him enough to put him back on his feet.

The wraps on his hands are useless now, torn away or soaked through with blood, so he leaves them for the rat. He knows, somehow, that there is a trap here, maybe even two or three—the tripwire is rope dipped in tar, nearly invisible until it presses up against his knees. Corvo steps over it, slow and careful, and takes the bolt launcher behind it apart. 

There’s another trap in a side passage, and behind it a crate marked for Dunwall Market full of coins and more elixir. Someone has set whale-oil lanterns burning up and down the sides of the path. The white light makes his eyes water and he stumbles past them, drops to his hands and knees to cross the water on a pair of iron bars. He staggers up a set of rusted stairs, seeking the shadows beyond it, and falls over a wooden box. 

There’s a note on top.

Corvo leans out into the light to read it, and when he’s done he starts to laugh again, a terrible broken wheezing sound in the dark. 

But when he opens the box there are bottles of brandy and boiled water, linen bandages, and clean clothes. Corvo cleans up as best he can, snarling like a hound as he splashes brandy onto the worst wounds. Bandages to keep the blood at bay, and then clothes, his own clothes, layers of wool and baleen and leather and the blue-and-gold coat of his office. A pair of boots he has never seen before but that fit perfectly, that give him some kind of traction against the mossy stones. A sword handle that unfolds into a sword. A crossbow, eight bolts and three sleeping darts. A key. 

*

In the end Corvo doesn’t even need the darts to get past the four-man patrol blocking his way out. He puts one in a chokehold when he turns his back to piss, leaves him snoring in the shadows. The others are looking everywhere but up, so as soon as he struggles onto the pipes above their heads he is safe. 

Corvo considers dropping from his perch; using a guard to break his fall, the joyous splash of red as blade meets throat. His knuckles turn white around the hilt of his sword. He moves on, silent and unseen. 

He doesn’t want to think about how long he has been down here.

*

The bulrushes are thick, the shadows thicker, and Corvo hasn’t yet left the safety of the sewer mouth. There is a curtain of falling water between them, splashing on stone and drowning out his footsteps. He knows the white-haired man on the shore can’t see him, as surely as he knows the colour of the Void, the exact reach of his blade. 

And yet.

“Corvo, over here!”

Corvo does not move. The stranger frowns into the shadows. Looks him directly in the eye. 

“Quickly!

Corvo levels his crossbow. 

The stranger shifts his weight, but does not look away. He takes on the manner Corvo has seen Overseers use with skittish hounds. 

“I’m a friend. I’m Samuel, and I work for some good people who want very much to meet you.”

Corvo had used that voice, that low, soothing tone, on Emily, during thunderstorms. That, more than anything else, makes him straighten up and step out onto the bleached white shore. The light is the same as when he first ran out the smouldering remains of the door. The stranger doesn’t startle or smile or look away, just keeps on talking in that same calming voice. 

“They said you’d come out here, but I can still hardly believe it. I’ll take you to meet them, just down the river from here.”

If Corvo could, he would question who these alleged _good people_ are, where exactly he means by _down the river_. He would snarl about things like _loyalty_ and _common purpose_ and _trust_ , and above all _where the Void is Emily_. 

His throat hurts, and his eyes hurt, and his skin hurts. Speaking will hurt. He’s very tired. 

He folds his sword and bow away, presses his fingers into the wound across his throat. All he has left is a pained rasp. 

“All right, old man. Let’s go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “Yet there are moments when the walls of the mind grow thin; when nothing is unabsorbed, and I could fancy that we might blow so vast a bubble that the sun might set and rise in it and we might take the blue of midday and the black of **midnight and be cast off** and escape from here and now.”  
>  \-- Virginia Woolf, _The Waves_


	3. no yoke of line or hue

All of Gristol whispered about how the Serkonan archipelago was home to pirates and heretics and not much else. There were pirates, as everywhere, but they were a minority; the people were mostly fishers or traders, and the sea was the life of the island. When monsoons washed out the crops or the goats grew too large and venomous to be safely milked, which was often, it was the bounty of the ocean that let them survive another year.

Gristol wasn’t quite right about the pirates, but when it came to heretics and apostates and witches they were absolutely correct. 

Corvo had been born on the third island in the string, a place of bare grey stone and tough grey weeds. His mother had been the quartermaster on a privateer, his father her boatswain. He had been raised to give thanks for fair weather and sacrifice in storms and calms alike, to draw omens from the number of birds or whales on the horizon, to drape a corner of every home he’d ever had with blue and purple fabric. He knew the value of runes and charms, and the power of blood and bone and song and fire (and above all, to run whenever he saw the flash of sunlight on a golden mask.) 

When he came to Dunwall the Abbey had most generously deigned to teach him the error of his ways. 

In the end, of course, it had not been the Strictures that gave him the strength to lift a sword, or trek through the sewer, or render every guard in Coldridge unconscious. 

Corvo opened his eyes to the Void. 

*

_Hello, Corvo._

His room. The Hound Pits. But not.

_Your life has taken a turn, has it not?_

He could have been floating in the air, or crushed beneath the weight of an ocean. A beautiful boy in front of him, black hair black eyes skin the colour of whalebone. Shadows warped and curled and reached out to cradle him when he would have fallen to his knees. 

_The Empress is dead, her precious daughter Emily is lost somewhere in the city._

Something slick traced over his face. 

_And you will play a pivotal role in days to come._

It might have been blood. 

_For this I have chosen you,_

The shadows behind the boy were moving too, curling and uncurling like tentacles around a whale’s mouth. Pulling him in.

_and drawn you into the Void._

The voice was thunder and whale-song and gunshot. It felt like biting down on ice. It made his bones hurt. 

_I am the Outsider, and this is my mark._

Molten gold poured from his left hand. He staggered. Smoke curled into his eyes. When he could see again the mark was etched in black against his hand, gleaming like a fresh tattoo. He pressed it to his lips. 

_There are forces in this world and beyond the world,_

A lamppost floated by, clipped a wall and spun away into the sky. 

_great forces that men call magic,_

He found himself stepping on water that held as firm as stone, then onto stone that yielded like wool beneath his weight. 

_and now these forces will serve your will._

In the corner of his eye there was a whale, longer than Clavering Boulevard. The tentacles around its mouth seemed to float. Corvo thought of them reaching out to him, their slick strength against his skin. 

_Use this newfound power,my gift to you._

The air was crushing him. 

_Come find me._

*

YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER  
YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER  
YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER  
YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER  
YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER  
YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER  
YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER YOU CANNOT SAVE HER

*

_In the days that follow your trials will be great, Corvo._

He might have tried to slit Burrows throat, if he’d had a weapon. Instead all he could do was focus on the plans in front of him, the paths of watchtowers and tallboys, the tanks of oil powering alarms and walls of light.  
 _Seek the ancient runes bearing my mark in the lonely places of your world,_

He could have killed both the twins without hesitation, seeing one lay hands on Emily. He thought the one in the black vest might be Morgan. From Instead he looked at the quality of the light filtering down without a source, the furniture, the paintings. The Golden Cat. 

_and at shrines raised in my name._

He reached forward and the mark on his hand burned brilliantly gold. For a brief moment he felt like he was drowning, a soft, gentle death, breath stolen away by the brilliant blue around him. Then he found himself breathing again, on his feet, with the twins far behind him. 

_These runes will grant you powers beyond those of other men._

Corvo thought about seeing the world through the eyes of a fish or rat or hound, of throwing men aside with no more than a thought. He thought of plague rats and blood and the taste of ash.

_To help you find these runes I give you this_

That beautiful boy before him again. The Outsider. Each word made Corvo’s ribcage pulse. 

_The heart of a living thing, moulded by my hands_

There was something wrong with the way the light reflected off the clockwork in the heart. Corvo reached out to take it and found it in his hand. 

_With this heart you will hear many secrets, and it will guide you towards my runes, no matter how they may be hidden_

The shadows had been curling around his limbs so long it was almost a surprise to find they were not there. 

_Listen to the heart now and find another rune_

*

“This place is the end of all things. And the beginning.”

It was a trick, of course. It had always been a trick. 

“All of time is meaningless here. Neither seconds nor centuries.”

He knew the beat of this heart better than he knew his own. 

“Someday this place will devour all the lights in the sky.”

He might have wept, or screamed, but for the fear that if he started he might never be able to stop.

*

When his fingers finally close over pale bone, the Void’s eerie silence ends. The air seems to burn around him, rushing in his ears. The shadows coalesce around him again. The wounds on his arms open and his own blood fills the carving in the rune, garnet red. 

Something slides down his spine. A memory, maybe; Jessamine’s fingers, gentle but certain, pausing over each vertebra. The shadows curl and twist inside him like a fever, and when they release him Corvo lands hard on all fours, shaking.

_How you use what I have given you falls upon you, as it has to the others before you._

His arms begin to prickle, then his chest and back. When he pulls up his sleeves he can see his wounds scabbing over, closing into shiny pink scars. The mark on his left hand burns.

_And now I return you to your world._

Corvo lets his eyes fall closed. 

_But know that I will be watching with great interest._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> “It is as if our inward selves, released from the bonds of daytime and objectivity, revelled in prisoned emotions which are hastily stifled when we would translate them. In dreams and visions lie the greatest creations of man, for on them rests **no yoke of line or hue**.”  
>  \--H. P. Lovecraft & R. H. Barlow, _The Night Ocean_


End file.
